Super cheap, after Christmas snack shopping.

Look at these goodies I found in various shops. At this time of year, all the supermarkets and little corner shops are knocking stuff down like Billy-Oh. The pork stuffing is basically the same amount of meat as you would get in a pack of sausages, but for 38p, bargain! 20p for the salad, genius!

The super tasty houmous was found in Waitrose for 10p, usually £1.49p  Cheap as chick peas!

and these rolls, it's a good idea to pop into a Waitrose or an M&S Food just before it closes as they always have something reduced as they tend not to keep as much for the next day, these roll were 5p each, usually 3 for a quid. I bought about two quids worth and filled my freezer up.  

I cooked the herby pork stuffing as directed, although you could make them into sausage or burger shapes quite easily, on one of them I spread about a tablespoon full of sandwich pickle just to experiment and it worked, made it even more tasty.  

I grilled the inside of the rolls, dolloped a big dollop of tasty houmous in, a handful of salad, a chunk of sausage and a drizzle of sauce. SCOFF!  

So, rolls, fillings and everything 20 pence a pop or there abouts.
ENJOY!

Cheap FAT FREE Christmas flavoured muffins 8p each.

LOOK! A cats paw print inside an orange. Is the creator a cat? Could this explain string theory?

anyhoo on to less philosophical matters, food. To start off with I took two tablespoons of mincemeat from a jar, put it in a wee bowl with juice from a norange and and some booze., left it to mingle

100gs Self raising flour, you can get SR flour from any of the major shops for about 50p for a 1.5 kilo bag. I tried to work out how much 100gs would cost from that, less than five pence, if anyone can get a closer answer, please let me know.For reason of clarity I shall round it up to 5p to add it all up later.

a well buttered muffin tin

100gs caster sugar. about ten pence worth I reckon. so 15p so far

see? 100gs

smoosh three eggs and sugar and get plenty of air in there, I used a leccy whisk for that. Eggs are about £1,25 for 15 at Asda etc so 25p for the eggs. 40pence so far

pop a bit of unsweetened coco powder in with the flour, I have no idea how to work out the cost of a tablespoon of coco so lets say five pence, it cant be more than that surely. 45pence all in so far

and sieve into the eggy sugar mix, fold it in with a spatch, you need to fold not whip at this stage or you will kick the air out of your intended sponge mix, while you are doing this bit also fold in the mincemeat and booze you mixed together earlier.

I used a medium sized ladle to make sure each cup was equal

licky bowl a clock

15 to twenty minutes in a gas 5 oven and they should be all yumpshous and scofapig. SIX muffins for under 50 pence. NOM

leave them to cool, or not, its entirely up to you

for my next batch I cut out wee circle of grease proof paper to stop them from having sticky bottoms

start again with the 100gs sugar and three eggs, remember, lots of air at this stage.

this time I put half the sponge mix in the tins but without coco powder, dropped in a tangerine/satsuma segment in each one

quickly mixed in a tablespoon of coco into the remaining mix and dolloped it evenly in. so when they cook, they become marbled. 

gas 5 15-20 mins again

and viola, a heap of Christmasy muffins

and this is what the marbled ones look like inside, mmmmmmm 12 muffins for a quid.
Oh and they are lovely fresh our of the oven with cream.

Birds love my fat balls.

Something a little different for this blog,
keeping our feathered friends happy and fed during the cold weather. 

When you spend a lot of time cooking and kitchening, you realise that there are some things that you just cant save for human consumption even if you are an avid believer in never throwing anything away.
If you have a big enough freezer, you can save fat and stock from meats for stews/dripping etc but you never get to use it all. No wukkas me old China-plate, just save it 'till winter.
Get a big mixing container like the one in the picture and lob your nuts in it, with the renderings of the various animals you have consumed throughout the year. For binding, I also throw in bits of bread, crackers, bacon rind, bird seed mix, pretty much anything apart from Mars Bars and chocolate etc because despite what you may have heard, birds aren't that keen on chocolate.
 

I covered a 12 hole fairy cake tin in foil and pressed each fat ball in to the dip. I have experimented with setting looped string into them for hanging the fat balls from the tree, but don't bother, it really is pointless, because five minutes of even the daintiest of birds pulling your nuts out will have your balls all over the shop. 

Squish all the mix together good and tight, so the bread and fat bind and help the nuts and seeds stay in place. You can put these in the fridge or freezer and take them out when needed, just leave them on the grass or bird table but they work very well in the round hanging cages you can buy for putting nuts in.

So go on, feed the birds from your left overs, Don't throw anything away.

Home made mincemeat for home made Christmas pies

My mincemeat was made from a bag of Tesco's VALUE mixed fruit with a few tots of Cointreau and a mulled wine bag

warmed it up in a pan for a while turned the heat off and left it to mingle for a couple of hours

chucked it in a filo sheet with some apples that came off trees for free, trees are good like that.

some with just mincemeat, some with apple and mincemeat and some with roast chop nuts in

oh look , a bit fell off. who had that then?

fat ones with apple and mincemeat, thin ones just mincemeat.

an aerial view

oh and with cream on for some reason makes them better. odd that

£6.16 pence, 30 portions of food from marked down stuff.

Yep, that's right. A whole shed load of nommy foodstuffs for much cheapness.
My brother went to Waitrose on the way home from work, at about half seven in the evening and followed the lady with the big trolley who goes around reducing stuff before they close, and it paid off, check this out, over a Kilo of mince, WAITROSE MINCE, I hasten to add, for £1.28p

the veal mince I made into Koftas, long thin burgers, or skinless sausages for those of you having difficulty with the concept of long burgers :-)  The beef mince I made into burgers and as I was going to make some more spanakopita (see other recipes) I would do one big cook and then freeze.  

So I had the meat ready, got some filo £1.38 from Asda, with the meat that comes to £2.66p 

Onions for the chopping and the cooking and a tad of garlic. It is always tricky to work out the price of one onion or a clove of garlic so in the interests of fairness I shall say a quid for them all, the shallots, as they are usually a smidge more expensive,

 2 red onions and 2 white onions, put the chopped shallots in the pan ,one red onion, one white onion and chop what's left, finely, into a mixing bowl.

Get the shallots and onions over a bit of heat with some olive oil in them.  While that is warming up.....

.....chuck your  raw beef mince into the bowl with the onion, a good sprinkle of garlic powder and black pepper.
 

This is a brilliant way to pad out meatball etc dishes and so cheap, 15p, would you Adam & Eve it?  It can increase the amount you get out by half as much again.

So chuck that in  and mix it all up good and proper, a healthy splodge of ketchup and olive oil for binding, another big stir then bung it in the fridge while you get on with other stuff.

One bag of spinach from Asda, a quid...

Lob the frozen spinach in the pan where the onions and garlic are cooking  and leave that to cook down while you turn the veal mince into.....

...Kofta shapes, I didn't add any onion to the veal mince because it's quite light and delicate in flavour, I just added bread crumbs, Vegeta (see other recipes), black pepper, oregano and olive oil. Pop them in the oven, gas 5 for about half an hour.  

When the spinach has cooked down make sure it is mixed well and then drain of the excess water, try and save the green spinachy water as it's great for stocks and soups. While that is draining.....

Get the beef mince, onion mix out of the fridge and squish into 12  burger/ball shapes and put them into a muffin tin, this is the easiest way to make sure they are roughly the same size and cook properly without falling apart.
When you put these in the oven, move the veal koftas dowwn one shelf and put these in where the kofta originally were.

Chop the feta and add to the spinach, I shant go through all of that as you can find the details in other recipes on here.

ooh some cheeky so and so has gone and half inched one of the blighter's.
This is how the burgers should come out, this way you can freeze them as is or add them to a sauce, or just use them in a bun with cheese and stuff, I freeze them two to a box in them plastic containers from the curry house. 

oh and I eat some too. 

I also rolled some of the cooked kofta into the spinach/feta/filo pie. 

and the rest I left as normal vegetarian filo pies.

See? Loads of food for not much money,  £6.16p for over 30 pieces of food.
Sling most of it in the freezer, scoff some now, happy bellys.